


hillclimb

by knapp_shappeys



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Father-Daughter Relationship, Feel-good, Gen, Historical Figures, Historical References, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29952342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knapp_shappeys/pseuds/knapp_shappeys
Summary: Goodwood Hill, West Sussex, 1999. A freshly winged but as yet unemployed Linda Fairbairn stands with her father in verdant gardens, waiting to see a tigress.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 4





	hillclimb

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes about circumstantially necessary historical liberties. (Weird to think of 1999 as history, but I digress.)
> 
> \- I mixed some of the Festival of Speed’s other events into the apparent date of the hillclimb itself: Saturday, 19 June 1999. (Almost my birthday...but not quite!) At least, that’s if my research is correct—there’s not a whole lot about the days’ events available on the Internet, sadly.
> 
> \- The locations and appearances of various paddocks and displays on the grounds of Goodwood House are probably all wrong. I had to use a 2019 map to roughly plot out where Linda and her father went that day.
> 
> good lord this is simply dripping with self-indulgence

“But _Dad.”_

“Yes?” he asked with an affectionate smile, turning back from her door.

“It’s just…” Linda Fairbairn picked at the skin around her thumbnail and chose her words carefully. “I kind of wanted…”

“You kind of wanted what?”

“Well...I thought I’d have my first hours—I mean, my first _real_ flight...somewhere fun. Maybe Paris, or something? Not...just another cross-country.”

“You’ll have fun,” her father dismissed, an amused look spreading across his face. “Even more than you’d have in Paris.”

“In...West Sussex?”

“Goodwood’s got a lot going for it. The aerodrome, the scenery...that’s not even mentioning the main event.”

“That car exhibition thing. I’ll be flying you to _your_ car exhibition thing.” Linda looked at her father over her nails.

“I wouldn’t be asking you to come if _you_ weren't interested in them too, silly. I can't count how many times you used to sit and watch _Rally Report_ on the rug when you were small—it’s sad that the show stopped.”

“Wait, no! Oh no, they’ve _stopped_ it?” Linda sat up in her seat despite her previous resolve to remain indifferent, and her father chuckled, both of them knowing she’d just proven his point. 

“Just last year, yeah.”

“Oh. That’s sad, actually. I really used to like that show...” Linda slouched back into her desk chair. “Will...will there be rally cars there? At Goodwood?”

“Of course,” her father replied, voice exuberant—he knew he’d successfully roped her in. “The theme for this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed is pretty catchy. ‘A Millennium of Power.’ Audi’s going to have their turn with the presentation, and you know what that means…”

“Hm.” She wasn’t going to let him have the satisfaction of having convinced her to come, not quite yet. “What exactly? They’ll have...will they be bringing along their Group B…?”

“They’ll most likely have some of their new offerings, but the manufacturers often have old favorites on display or for demonstration. Most likely they’ll bring the quattro, didn’t you like those? And didn’t you have a bunch of newspaper cutouts posted up here before?” he inquired, looking around the walls of her room. “Of those drivers you liked to watch when you were little?”

“There were a couple...but I took them down a long time ago.” If she remembered correctly, they were still stashed in a shoebox behind her bookshelf. Most of her friends had found it weird that she collected photographs and newspaper clippings of Michèle and Fabrizia and men old enough to be her father. Henri had come down last of all—he would stay forever young. But on a slightly more lighthearted note (and more pertinent to Linda’s needs) it was easy to conceal the fact that one fancied girls if one plastered photographs of a suitably attractive young man over the walls of one’s room.

“Kenneth from the flying club owes me a favor. I’m thinking we could borrow a Piper and fly down for the event, directly to Goodwood’s aerodrome,” her father continued. “We’ll find accommodations, bring a picnic...we could make a day of it. But honestly, I think you should just get out and fly for _fun._ You’ve been cooped up for too long studying and flying to build hours.” He leaned on her doorway, crossing his arms and looking smug. “And either way, I’ve already got tickets.”

“When is it?” Linda asked eagerly, dropping all pretense, and her father grinned.

* * *

Linda clambered out of the Cherokee’s single door and onto its wing, squinting against the June sunlight. She closed and locked the plane, having just finished installing the sun shade from the inside.

“For someone who rarely lands on turf, Linda, you did good,” her father beamed from the ground, stretching a hand to her. “Jump down, I’ve got you.”

She took hold of his hand and stepped off the wing onto the grass, pulling out her favorite baseball cap and putting it on. “Thanks for securing the plane, Dad. Sorry I took so long with the checklist.”

“Don’t worry about it. I say it all the time, and it’s true: safety should always be your top priority. Trust me, you’ll eventually do it enough times that it’ll go by a little easier.”

Working together, they did a quick walkaround of the plane, checking over the tires before wiping off the windshield.

Linda followed her father off the airfield to close their flight plan; once cleared, they followed those who’d had the same idea to fly into the airfield on a mile-long walk to Goodwood House.

The scent of motor oil was already strong, cloying in the midday air. Linda wrinkled up her nose as they paused by the Honda paddock, adjusting her backpack straps as her father laughed at her. “That’s how you know it’s _really_ started,” he remarked loudly.

“God, it’s so loud over here,” Linda complained. “What’s that racket?”

“What else would it be, the helicopters?” Her father laughed at his own joke. “Of _course_ the cars. Just listen to those engines go!”

“Mm,” Linda acquiesced absently, watching the hordes of visitors as they gawked at the cars and their drivers. The drivers stood coolly in the midst of it all, talking and laughing, pens flourishing as they signed autographs and eager fans posed for photographs.

“Looking for anyone specific?” her father asked with a joking smirk.

“I don’t know anyone here, Dad.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. You’ve been buried in your manuals these past few years.”

They traipsed around the grounds, which had been converted into something like a fairground for car enthusiasts. Wherever they went, the smell of burnt oil hung in the air—after a while, Linda found that she’d stopped noticing it. Fans and photographers alike were milling around the various Hondas and Ferraris and Mercedes-Benz racing cars on display. The Brooklands paddock was also well-loved, filled with cars dating from before both world wars in keeping with the “Millennium” theme of the day.

After eating their picnic under a sprawling tree, her father finally took her over to the Audi display.

“Go pose in front of the sculpture,” he gently pushed her over toward the display.

“Oh, come _on,_ Dad. I’m not a kid anymore.” Linda rolled her eyes but obeyed, standing awkwardly in front of the sculpture.

“Look a little natural,” her father insisted, holding up his camera. “I don’t have much film left for retakes.”

Linda adjusted the bill of her cap and struck a pose, smiling for the camera.

Once her father had nodded his approval, Linda turned around to look more closely at the sculpture rearing up in front of Goodwood House. The summer light gleamed off shining chrome bars, bent into the shape of some kind of slope. Two silver cars were bolted to the slope, implying some sort of race on an incredibly steep track. Three other cars were on display at the sculpture’s foot.

“What do you think?” her father asked, coming to stand next to her. “Are those real cars up there?”

“I can’t think of how they’d put real cars up like that. It’d be too heavy,” Linda shook her head incredulously. “And what kinds of cars are they? I mean, I know they’re Audis, but...what are they called?”

Her father gazed up at them. “I don’t know the one on the left, actually,” he confessed at last. “All I know is that it’s older. From before World War II.”

“They _both_ look like something out of sci-fi. I can’t tell which one’s older.”

Her father laughed at her. “True. The one on the right is actually a quattro.”

“Really?” Linda squinted up at it. “I’ve never seen a quattro that looked like that.”

“It’s a concept car. Never made it to production.”

“Hm.” Linda looked aside at the Audi paddock, where fans and journalists were swarming the cars. “Wonder what else is going on over there?”

“Let’s find out.” Her father was already trotting over, and Linda followed him, shaking her head in amusement.

Audi’s offerings for the Festival were spread out across the paddock, mechanics bustling around chrome hoods and exposed engines as they prepared to participate in events. Some drivers were standing by their cars, answering questions.

A flash of yellow and white caught Linda’s eye, and she leaned over the hay bales, a jolt shooting through her stomach. “Um, Dad?”

“Mmp?” her father grunted, squinting through his viewfinder.

“Is that…?”

Her father looked up and in the direction of Linda’s gaze.

A gap in the crush of eager fans and reporters and mechanics cleared momentarily. Before it closed again, Linda caught sight of a smaller figure in a racing suit standing by a quattro in very familiar yellow-and-white rally trim, talking animatedly from under a mass of dark hair. “Dad—isn’t that—”

“Isn’t that _who?”_ Her father sounded just a touch too smug, and Linda gazed sharply aside.

“Did you have me fly all the way down the country because you knew _Michèle Mouton_ was gonna be here?”

Her father laughed at her. “Don’t think I didn’t notice when you used to ferret away my magazines to clip out pictures.” Linda felt her face flare up, and she turned away as her father continued to chuckle. “Now where are you going off to?”

“Toilet,” Linda muttered, shoving her hands in her pockets and feeling very disquieted indeed. For what reason, however, she couldn’t put into words.

“Oh, stop it, Linda. You’re being weird.” Her father pushed off the hay bales and joined her. “Come on. She’s going to tear up the hill with that old quattro soon—you won’t want to miss it.”

They made the hike partway up the hill to the last viewing area before the finish line. Linda spent this silent walk stewing in sheer embarrassment and unease. 

“Here, Linda,” her father waved her through a gate and into a cordoned-off viewing section, and she followed him to a spot at the cordon. They were at distance from the protective hay bales set at the periphery of the road, and a breeze stirred the trees on the opposite side of it. “Need some shade?” he asked, holding up his program of events and raising an eyebrow.

“No thanks.” Linda pulled out her water bottle and took a drink, looking out at the road. In the distance, an announcer told them a Le Mans-winning car was starting the hillclimb. 

Her father used his booklet to block out the sunlight over his face. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Linda dismissed, shifting her weight from one foot to the other and trying to put words to the strange tangle of emotions in her stomach. “It’s just...seeing Michèle, in person...I think younger me would have...I don’t know how she’d have felt, actually. To be honest…” She weighed the costs in her hands. To tell, not to tell…

It had been less than a month since Linda had achieved what she’d worked so hard for since leaving school—her frozen ATPL. She had thrown herself into official pilot training the first moment she’d been allowed to, at eighteen years old.

Three years. It had taken three years, hours of flying, checkride after exam after checkride after exam: but at last, Linda had gotten what she’d come for.

At last, she was a pilot.

Linda had never been the type to expect too much—being the daughter of Captain (and later, Chief Pilot) Fairbairn essentially nullified the chances of _that_ happening—but she had to admit some part of her had expected...something different. Not fireworks, exactly. But it had been as simple as her wheels meeting the ground as she landed her final checkride, her examiner leaning over as she taxied to stand and wringing her hand in congratulations. Just another successful checkride.

The only thing that had set this one apart from all the others was the gleam of brass as her father had presented her with a set of wings, out on the apron as the aero club looked on and hooted.

But maybe it hadn’t been the end of her pilot education or the rituals surrounding it that put her off her ease. Maybe it was the fact that she was twenty-one, fresh out of flight school, armed with a few Highers and no degrees—and not yet willing to land a job.

Sheer determination had got her this far.

Was this how far it would carry her?

A girl, staying up by torchlight, with only the sound of blades slicing through paper to keep her company. Another picture taped to the wall next to her bed, where she could see it while lying on her side. That was the best place, because she could go to sleep and wake, hours later, looking at it. She reserved it only for her favorite pictures. A Concorde her father had brought back when he’d flown to France on a tour. An old one her father had shown her of Michèle and Fabrizia spraying champagne as they stood on the hood of their quattro in York. Another racing picture of Michèle from Pikes Peak ‘84 she’d found in an old magazine. A photograph of her father in uniform from around the time of her birth, his blue tie still bright on his chest.

That girl had had very clear goals and plans, her whole life plotted on an intense course. Highers in chemistry, in engineering science, in geography, in mathematics, in Spanish. Flight school at 18. Transport license at 21. First officer right after that, because that was when her father had become a flight engineer, and everyone had always asked if she wanted to be just like him, and she had always said _Yes! Of course!_ Work her way up the ranks. Captain by 35. Training captain ten years later.

She’d sped through her life, and it had taken her this far.

But suddenly, inexplicably, she had stopped.

“It’s just…” she struggled to find the words and settled for shrugging at her father and pulling a face. He lowered his program, his face filling with concern.

“Oh, Linda. Take your time.”

The heritage car that had been announced shot past them and hurtled for the finish. A murmur of appreciation rose from the crowd gathered at their viewpoint.

Linda took another drink of water, her father still looking gently at her. “It’s just…” she screwed the cap back on the bottle and held it by her side, somehow not finding the energy to twist around and put it back into her backpack. “Thinking about it, I don’t know...I don’t know if my younger self would be...would be proud of me.”

“Linda. You know _I’m_ proud of you. You know Mum’s proud of you too, and all the guys at the club, we’ve all been rooting for you this whole time—”

“Yes, I do,” she interrupted, then caught herself and shot her father an apologetic look. “I do know that. And I’m glad. I’m grateful. I just...I think it’s important that I...that _I_ can find the...the _grace..._ to be proud of myself.”

“And you think you don’t have that?”

“I don’t think...I don’t know if I deserve it.”

“Why don’t you think you deserve it?”

“Well…” Linda struggled for words again and settled for fidgeting with her program, lightly bouncing the book off her leg before replying. “I know you always told me...that I shouldn’t expect too much. But...when I was a girl I thought...I thought by now, I’d be…”

“Flying? With an airline?”

Linda let out a combination of a laugh and a sigh. “Unrealistic, I know, but you were my age when…”

“Oh, Linda. Things were different back then. _Very_ different. You’re being too hard on yourself.” Her father leaned forward and gently poked her shoulder. “Big Linda, and little Linda. Both of you are being too hard on yourself.”

“So you’re saying…” Linda looked back up at her father.

“What I’m saying, Linda...don’t take it too fast.” A lopsided grin came over his face. “Not like _them,”_ he jerked his thumb at the road. _“They_ have to take it fast, that’s the way they get their bread. Not you. If it takes you a little longer to start flying for a living...that won’t change how proud I am of you. How proud _we_ are of you. And you should tell that to little Linda, too.”

Linda giggled, just as the announcer told the crowds that Michèle Mouton would shortly be beginning her go at the hillclimb in her quattro.

“Ah! Sounds like it’s time, Linda,” her father turned back toward the road, gently elbowing her. “Think she can get into the shootout on Sunday?”

Smiling, Linda looked down the road in the direction from which they’d came. “I just want to see her drive,” she murmured to herself, but when she looked at her father, he was smiling too.

Murmurs of anticipation rose around them as the seconds ticked by...then at last, Linda could piece out the roar of an engine against faint cheers.

The car came around the bend towards them, yellow and white trim flashing in the daylight. And there she was—out of the pictures on Linda’s bedroom walls, from the reruns of _Rally Report_ on television—in the driver’s seat, staring intently forward out of her helmet.

It was quicker than anything, and before Linda could think too hard at all, she was gone. The only indication that she had been there at all was the echo of her engine’s burble and chirp of her tires against the tarmac.

It was funny, in a way, how Linda thought of Michèle and her car as one. Someday she might be thought of in that way too, but with her aeroplane. Someday she could become one with the machine like that.

Someday...but not today.

Linda and her father walked away from the viewpoint, to their next destination. Maybe they would look at some of the other exhibits. Maybe she would get a shirt. More pictures. Maybe an autograph.

They had time. They could take the afternoon slow.

She had time. She could take her life a little slower.

“Dad?” she ventured, pressing closer to his side.

“Yes?”

“I think...I think I’ll look for...for _smaller_ flying jobs. Just to build my hours and such. Nothing too big, but I’ll...I’ll start there. Maybe...I’ll pick up some hobbies along the way, might make some money off those.”

“That’s a good plan.” Her father slung an arm over her shoulders, squeezed her closer to him. “Maybe you’ll take up rallying, too?”

Linda laughed. “Maybe even that.”

They wove their way through the crowds and back down to Goodwood House, the sun warm against their backs.

**Author's Note:**

> Artwork is by me; you can find more of it (and me!) at my [tumblr](https://knapp-shappeys.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Also! The video of the actual event that is featured in this work—Michèle Mouton's run up Goodwood Hill in 1999—can be found [here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvDCTosjZp0) It's a short watch: about a minute and a half. 
> 
> Sadly, her engine misfires at the very beginning, but she crams the run under one minute and makes it look easy. Absolute queen behavior, mwah <3


End file.
